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Vol. 98, No. 27 12 Pages ©1997 Collegian Inc.
Jury finds man guilty on one count of rape
By KRISTIN WALPOLE
Collegian Staff Writer
Amin O. Robinson, a former University
student, was found guilty yesterday by
Centre County President Judge Charles
Brown of statutory sexual assault, inde
cent assault, corruption of a minor and
reckless endangerment of a 14-year-old
high school student.
However he was found not guilty of
indecent assault, corruption of a minor and
reckless endangerment in a separate inci
dent involving a 15-year-old girl by a jury
made up of 10 men and two women.
District Attorney Ray Gricar repeatedly
Tentative budget
agreement made
By ALAN FRAM
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON Climaxing
months of bargaining and years of
partisan warfare, congressional
Republicans and Clinton adminis
tration officials announced tenta
tive agreement yesterday on a plan
to balance the budget by 2002 while
slashing taxes by about $l4O billion
for millions of families, students
and investors.
The accord put leaders of both
parties in position to claim credit
for the broadest tax cut since 1981
and, if actually achieved, the first
federal budget surplus since 1969.
“We have a tentative agreement
on a very good balanced-budget
plan,” an ebullient Treasury Secre
tary Robert Rubin told reporters as
he left a final Capitol bargaining
session. White House chief of staff
Erskine Bowles added: “We could
n’t be more pleased with the out
come.”
Senate Majority Leader Trent
Lott, R-Miss., said that pending a
review of the legislative language,
the Senate would begin debating
the spending bill tomorrow and the
tax bill perhaps Thursday. House
aides said that chamber could
approve both measures tomorrow
meaning that lawmakers would
be able to leave town Friday for
their summer recess as scheduled.
Asked about the prospects for
House passage, House Speaker
Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., said: “I
think it will sell itself. It’s a fabu
lous agreement.”
“The middle class is getting a
good break in this deal, and they
deserve it,” said Senate Budget
Committee Chairman Pete Domeni
ci, R-N.M.
The only initial discordant reac
tion came from some House liber
als. Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., bolt
ed from a meeting between Democ
rats and White House officials, say
ing, “I’ve heard all I want to hear.”
President Clinton got word of the
agreement while playing golf in
Las Vegas, said White House
spokesman Joe Lockhart.
“The president was pleased and
is looking forward to a full briefing
tomorrow,” Lockhart said.
Highlights of the pact included a
$5OO tax credit for many children;
a $24 billion effort to expand
CPA to put forth referendum
By MARK PARFITT
Collegian Staff Writer
State College Borough residents
may be faced with a referendum on
November’s ballot asking whether
they want the East College Heights
traffic diverters removed.
The referendum is being pur
sued by Citizens for Public Access
(CPA), a political action group that
created its charter and group
structure last night.
“I’ve been told by (State College
Borough) council the majority of
the people in the borough are in
favor of the diverters and we feel
that’s wrong,” CPA president Rick
Tetzlaff said. “The way to find out
is to put it to the voters.”
Although CPA has a week to
assemble, collect signatures and
file a referendum before the dead
line for the November elections, its
told jurors Robinson was 20 years old
when the incidents occurred in April and
July of 1995.
The two teens told similar stories stating
Robinson gave them drugs that caused
them to feel sedated and then took advan
tage of them sexually when the drugs took
effect.
The 14-year-old girl said she was raped
by Robinson when she called him to pick
her up after running away from home.
The girl and Robinson went back to his
apartment, 736 E. Foster Ave., and played
video games and smoked marijuana, she
said.
Soon after smoking she began to feel
health-care coverage for many of
the 10 million uninsured American
children; and a gradual 15-cent
boost in the 24-cent-per-pack feder
al cigarette tax.
In the end, although Republicans
made many late concessions, many
major disputes were resolved with
an everyone-wins approach. Under
lining this, the five-year, $B5 billion
net price tag for tax cuts set by the
May balanced-budget agreement
grew to about $9l billion. Overall,
some taxes were cut by about $l4O
billion while others were raised by
approximately $5O billion.
Three of the most troublesome
issues resolved Monday were over
details of the children’s tax credit,
a children’s health initiative and a
dispute over welfare recipients
taking subsidized jobs.
The GOP acceded to Clinton’s
demands for a $24 billion, five-year
effort to expand health-care cover
age for many of the country’s 10
million uninsured children. That
amount was $8 billion beyond what
many Republicans preferred, but
there was a catch. Clinton agreed
to let states have more leeway than
he preferred in deciding which ser
vices would be provided, such as
mental health and dental coverage,
though less state control than many
Republicans wanted.
Republicans dropped their
demand that welfare recipients
taking subsidized jobs in the public
and nonprofit sectors to be exempt
ed from minimum wage and other
worker protections. They argued
that such requirements would
make it harder to find such slots
and hurt state efforts to trim wel
fare rolls.
And in a triumph claimed by
both sides, there would be a $4OO
- tax credit in 1998, rising
to $5OO the next year, for children
age 16 and under. It would apply to
many families who earn as little as
$lB,OOO a year and owe little or no
income tax, a victory for Clinton.
But it would also go to single par
ents making as much as $75,000
and couples making $llO,OOO,
which Republicans wanted.
The package included about $4O
billion in education tax breaks, a
key Clinton demand to which law
makers added their own ideas. It
contains the president’s treasured
Please see BUDGET, Page 2.
"The way to find out is
to put it to the voters."
Rick Tetzlaff
president of Citizens for
Public Access
members plan to begin working
today.
“The referendum, in essence,
would call for the removal of the
diverters and also prevent the bor
ough from blocking streets with
diverters in the future,” Tetzlaff
said.
The borough installed the traffic
diverters over a year ago in
response to College Heights resi
dents’ concerns that excessive traf
fic was deteriorating their neigh
borhood. The diverters prevent
"She said '
//
me.
Brittany Ross
friend of the then 14-year-old victim
heavy and slumped against the wall where
he raped her, the 14-year-old said. After
the rape she found her friend, Brittany
Ross, at Campus Casino, 320 E. College
Ave., and asked her to accompany her
back to Robinson’s apartment to retrieve
her bag, she said.
Herman Goffberg, left, and Alex Bourgerie, center, celebrate after a Penn State track meet in 1941
Goffberg recently paid Bourgerie’s library fine 55 years after it was due.
Book fine, friendship returned
By JODI HANAUER
Collegian Staff Writer
Imagine cleaning out your
house and finding an overdue
library fine, not a few weeks
overdue but a few years 55
years to be exact.
Most people who would find
themselves in this situation
would just laugh for a few min
utes and then throw the fine out
and forget about it. Most people
does not include Alex Bourg
erie.
on diverters
motorists from traveling through
East College Heights to access
Park Avenue and have created an
increase of traffic on North Ather
ton Street.
Many residents outside College
Heights have complained the
diverters make it inconvenient for
them to travel to University loca
tions.
Ferguson Township’s supervi
sors have discussed filing a lawsuit
against the borough concerning the
diverters. CPA members decided
to support the township’s decision
to do that, but it also wants to pro
ceed with its own plans to remove
the traffic barriers.
Some CPA members were con
cerned that borough residents in
other neighborhoods would not
vote in favor of the diverter’s
removal because the residents feel
Please see COUNCIL, Page 2.
Tuesday, July 29,1997
he raped
Long Overdue
Bourgerie hadn’t kept in fre- erie’s 28 cent fine with the $1
quent contact with his friend bill Bourgerie had mailed to pay
Herman Goffberg of State Col- the fine.
lege, but recently called him to
tell the story of how he found
the old fine and to ask him to go
to Pattee and pay it off for him.
Bourgerie told his friend he
was dying of throat cancer and
he wanted to go out “clean” by
paying off all his bills and not
leaving any debts.
It was a very funny story,
Goffberg said, so he agreed to
go to the library to pay Bourg
A week later she confided in her about
the rape.
“She said, ‘Remember the day I asked
you to come get my stuff?’ ” Ross said.
“She said, ‘... he raped me.’ ”
The 15-year-old, whose charges failed to
convict Robinson, told the court she met
Robinson April 5,1995 at Campus Casino.
“We made small talk and then he asked
me for my number,” the girl said. “I wrote
my full name and number on symphony
tickets I had in my pocket.”
The following day Robinson contacted
the girl and they agreed to meet at Block
buster Video, 1101 N. Atherton St. He
picked her up in a car and he pulled
Photo courtesy of Herman Goffberg
Goffberg said the employees
at the library just laughed when
he explained the bill to them and
they signed a receipt that the
fine had been paid off, although
they didn’t actually take the
money.
Bourgerie discounted rumors
that he did this primarily for a
joke.
“It’s not really a joke. I took it
Please see OVERDUE, Page 2.
Published independently by students at Penn State
around to the side of the building where
Robinson offered her marijuana, she said.
The girl had recently begun taking
Prozac and refused the marijuana, fearful
of mixing the two drugs. But Robinson
stuck the marijuana in her face and she
gave in, the 15-year-old girl said.
“I was feeling really scared and vulnera
ble and I took one or two hits,” she said.
Shortly after the hit she began to feel
strange and she couldn’t move and that is
when Robinson assaulted her, she said.
Robinson, represented by Edward Bla
narik Jr., has a scheduled sentencing date
of August 18 at Centre County Courthouse
in Bellefonte.
New heart
treatment
rejected
Government advisors
reject a risky new laser
treatment for heart
angina.
By LAURAN NEERGAARD
Associated Press Writer
GAITHERSBURG, Md. Gov
ernment advisers yesterday reject
ed a revolutionary approach to
treating heart angina a laser that
promised to relieve chronic
patients’ crippling pain by zapping
up to 40 tiny holes into the heart
itself.
Some patients clearly showed
relief from pain, advisers to the
Food and Drug Administration
said. But the company seeking
approval to sell the treatment, PLC
Medical Systems, had serious defi
ciencies in its study, which could
even pose a risk to already-sick
patients, the scientists said.
“I have a close relative who
needs this procedure. There’s noth
ing I’d rather do than approve it,”
said Dr. Robert Califf of Duke Uni
versity. But he called the data sup
porting the laser inadequate and
troubling, and on a 9-2 vote, his fel
low panel members agreed.
At issue was a controversial but
long-awaited procedure called
transmyocardial revascularization
(TMR). By blasting tiny one mil
limeter holes into the left side of
the heart, the procedure theoreti
cally Increases blood flow to por
tions‘of the muscle that have been
severely damaged by advanced
heart disease.
In the two-hour operation, doc
tors slice a 4-inch cut between the
ribs to insert the laser, and then
blast directly into the heart. The
outer layers of the heart heal
almost immediately but the beating
heart forces these channels to stay
open in the interior. The theory is
these channels diffuse oxygenated
blood into the oxygen-starved tis
sue and relieve the crippling chest
pain known as angina.
About 150,000 Americans have
end-stage coronary artery disease,
which is almost always accompa
nied by angina. In some cases,
patients are in such pain they can
hardly walk.
The laser is intended for those
who are not helped by standard
medication, including nitroglycerin
and other drugs, and who have
already exhausted all surgical
options such as bypass. Many
patients with milder angina do
receive relief from medicines.
A study of 198 patients found
those who got TMR had fewer angi
na attacks than control patients
who got standard medication. For
those followed at least six months
after the operation, 65 percent of
the TMR patients had significant
angina improvement while drugs
helped just 10 percent of the con
trol patients.
Then doctors measured blood
flow through the heart. Among
TMR patients, 60 percent of those
whose angina improved signifi
cantly also showed a significant
increase in blood diffusion.
But complicating that measure
ment are suggestions that the holes
in the heart do re-close several
months after surgery.